Contents

The Halls of Mandos stood on the northern shores of Valinor,[1] looking out across the Encircling Sea. They were said to grow in size as the World aged, and their walls were hung with the tapestries of Námo's spouse Vairë, depicting all the events of unfolding history.

It was to the Halls of Mandos that the spirits of Elves and Men were gathered to await their different fates, and so Mandos was given its name of the Halls of Awaiting.[2][note 1] After a time, the immortal Elves could be re-embodied, and return from the Halls to their kin in Aman. Men had a different fate, a fate which, even among the Lords of Valinor, only Mandos and Manwë truly understood. No one, however, not even Morgoth, could escape the Halls without Mandos' permission.[3]

Mandos (Gnomish: Bannoth) is the name of a region of vast caverns in northern Aman, full of gloom and echoes, that went down under the Shadowy Seas.[6] Mandos is also occupied by spirits older than the world, that were with Ilúvatar.[7][5]

The region of Mandos contain the Halls proper, that are called after the Vala's own name, Ve (Gnomish: Gwi or Ingwi). The sable Hall has floors and columns of jet and is draped with dark vapours. It is lit only with a single vessel containing some gleaming drops from the pale dew of Silpion, placed in the centre. The Elves who die fare for days in Mandos until Vefantur spoke their doom, and they wait in the darkness, dreaming of their past deeds, until reincarnated.[6] In Gnomish, the Halls are also "improperly" (according to the Gnomish Lexicon) named Bannoth, after the Vala and the region. The Qenya Lexicon also refers to Mandos as "the Halls of Ve and Fui" without commenting whether it's proper usage.[5]

In the later The Etymologies, Mando or Mandos(se) is the proper name of the Vala, being a personal noun meaning "Imprisoner".[9]

Tolkien originally intended the Halls to be in northern Aman, on the edge of the Outer Sea. Christopher Tolkien, erroneously seeing a discrepancy, changed this to western Aman, on the edge of the Outer Sea for the published Silmarillion.[10] In The Book of Lost Tales Part One he referred to this change as a "piece of unwarranted editorial meddling."[11]

Notes

↑ In The Hobbit, there is a reference to the halls of waiting in the last words of Thorin: "'Farewell, good thief,' he said. 'I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed.'" (Chapter 18).